Tag: Service

I was saddened by the report in this newspaper last Friday about the deplorable state of the ‘Nigeria House’ in New York, as well as the poor condition of its staff. The report claimed that some of the diplomatic staff had not been paid for up to four months. While I was Ambassador at the UN (1981-84) I was involved in the early stages of the plans for the development of the property which was intended to bring the Nigerian Mission at the UN and our Consulate General in New York together under one roof, instead of two rented properties. The property was intended to save costs and was developed after I left New York in 1984. I have visited it a couple of times since then. It is a magnificent building of which Nigeria should be proud. But over the years I could see that lack of maintenance of the property has made it less alluring. Its neglect, like many other Nigerian diplomatic missions abroad, is due largely to lack of adequate funding, not really due to lack of funds. The following is an article by me, first published in my column in this paper in September, 2015, that sought to address the problem of inadequate funding for the Foreign Service. It is being published again unedited as I believe it addressed some of the critical problems of funding in the Nigerian diplomatic service.

One of the main challenges facing President Muhammadu Buhari is the urgent need to reduce the overall cost of public administration in the country. This has soared over the years. There is a national consensus that the bureaucracy at all levels of government has become too large, and that a reduction in its size and cost has become imperative. The current sharp decline in oil revenues, which have fallen this year alone by over 60 per cent, leaves the governments of the federation with no other choice but to begin to think seriously about how these much needed cuts in the cost of public administration can be achieved. President Buhari is well aware of this challenge and has alluded to it publicly several times. But he has not yet taken any practical or concrete steps to address this lingering problem. It is a difficult and painful task which requires great care and circumspection particularly at a time of mass unemployment. It will adversely affect the diplomatic service as well.

There were recent media reports that while being briefed by the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Lulu, President Buhari expressed his concerns about the large number of Nigeria’s diplomatic missions abroad, and the huge number of its overall diplomatic staff. Ambassador Lulu told the press that the President informed him that he intended doing something to reduce the number of our foreign missions. It is also possible that the overall staffing of the Foreign Ministry itself will form part of the review being proposed. But so far he has done nothing about this.

There is no doubt that the number of Nigerian diplomatic missions abroad has increased significantly in recent years. At independendence in 1960 Nigeria had less than a dozen diplomatic missions, mainly in Africa and Western Europe. In 1964, when I entered the diplomatic service this increased to about 25, largely in response to the need to have diplomatic representation particularly in the newly independent African countries. By 1976 the number of our diplomatic missions increased to 65. The civil war had ended and the need was felt for more missions to be opened abroad. From 1970 to 1976, over 100 new Foreign Service Officers (FSO) were recruited to staff both the expanded Foreign Ministry and the new diplomatic missions abroad. The surge in oil revenues made the increase in the number of missions and diplomatic staff possible and sustainable.

Today, we have 119 diplomatic missions abroad and it is becoming increasingly clear that, in our present dire financial situation, it is going to be financially difficult to sustain such a large number of diplomatic missions and staff. In 1964, the overall cost of our total diplomatic establishment, at home and abroad, was only 33 million pounds sterling. Since then, the cost of running both the MFA and our diplomatic missions has continued to rise inexorably. According to an official document issued by the MFA in 2012, by 2006, total MFA budget appropriation was N25.2b, of which over N20.2b, or 81 per cent, was spent on running our foreign missions. In 2011, budget appropriation for the MFA had increased to over N40b, with our foreign missions still accounting for over 81 per cent of the overall cost. This is where the major operating cost of the MFA is incurred. Average annual personnel cost of the MFA is less than N4b. Huge as these figures may appear to be, they account for an average of only 1 per cent of the total federal budget. In fact, it was only in 2007 that budgetary allocations to the Foreign Service reached 1.34 per cent of the budget of the federal government.

Two issues arise from this analysis. First, is the state spending more on its foreign representation than other public agencies? Relative to other agencies of the federal government, can we really say that the cost of running the Foreign Service, with its enormous global responsibilities, is too much? It is by no means clear that is the case, except that most of the cost incurred in running the Foreign Service and our diplomatic missions abroad is in foreign currencies. It is this that leads the public and the government to demand a reduction in appropriations to the MFA. For example defence and national security take an average of 15 per cent of the budget annually, education about 7 per cent, home administration over 12 per cent. So, in real and comparative terms, the overall cost to the nation of its Foreign Service is not as high as it seems. The second issue regarding costs is where the cuts, if necessary, are to be made. Is it in the cost of personnel or the number and size of our diplomatic missions abroad? I raise these questions because previous efforts to cut the cost of running the Foreign Service have on the whole focused on the senior staff of the MFA rather than on the large number of our foreign missions which account for over 80 per cent of the overall cost of running the Foreign Service. As a matter of fact in 1976 and 1984 when there were purges in the Foreign Service, more diplomatic missions were opened after. This showed that the purges were political and not motivated by any demonstrable need for cost reduction. Only a few years ago, a new diplomatic mission was opened in Juba, South Sudan, and our embassies in Caracas, Belgrade, the Vatican and Prague, which had been previously closed, were all reopened. Even the MFA complained officially about these inconsistencies in the manner our missions are opened, only to be closed later for lack of funding.

The fact of the matter, often ignored by the government and the public, is that some of Nigeria’s diplomatic missions were opened to accommodate failed politicians and political hacks who demand diplomatic postings as compensation from the government. And non-career ambassadors cost more to maintain than career ambassadors. Of Nigeria’s 119 diplomatic missions, about 60 have non-career ambassadors. But only a handful of these can be said to have what it takes to be a good ambassador. Many of them go abroad to serve themselves and not the nation. A few years ago when I visited Argentina and called on our embassy in Buenos Aires, I met a junior staff there who told me the political Ambassador had been absent from his post for over six months. Again when I served in Ankara, Turkey, in 1975, with concurrent accreditation to Iran, I could not understand the reason for our having a diplomatic mission in Ankara at the time. Subsequently, I learnt that the two missions were opened to accommodate Brigadier Kurubo, a former head of the Air Force. When I went to Teheran to present my letters, I discovered that Kurubo was not even known in the Foreign Ministry. Our Mission in Teheran was being run by a junior attaché who had not been paid for six months. I duly recommended that one of the two embassies be closed as our residual interest there in those days did not warrant us opening full-fledged embassies there. In fact, in disgust, I requested a posting back to Lagos after only a year in Ankara.

Many critics of our foreign representation have pointed out to the lack of resources in running our missions abroad. This is, in fact, the critical issue. For lack of funds most of our missions cannot be run properly and professionally. The Foreign Service is costly and cannot be run on shoe strings as is the case now. For instance, total MFA budget in 2009 was only US$306 million. That year, South Africa’s budget for its Foreign Ministry was US $702 million, nearly twice that of Nigeria. In 2010, while Nigeria’s Foreign Service budget fell to $232 million, South Africa’s was US$634. In 2012 our MFA budget was only US$317 million, while that of South Africa was US$720 million. Yet, South Africa’s GDP is only a third of Nigeria’s. As acknowledged by the MFA publication of 2012 , ‘Our diplomatic missions continue to suffer needless and painful embarrassments arising from  disconnection of utility services, ejection of staff from rented apartments, ejection of children from schools for failure to pay school fees and arrears of salaries of the diplomatic and other staff’. In 1989, after verification, the federal government settled an accumulated debt of $100m in our diplomatic missions. In 2005 a similar exercise took place with the missions being bailed out again. From the huge financial scandal of the Jonathan federal PDP government in which over $20b was simply diverted to private pockets, can we seriously say that our country cannot afford to run a decent and well funded diplomatic service? The MFA was not involved in any of these financial scandals. Less well endowed African countries fund their diplomatic missions better than ours.

It is up to the government to determine how many diplomatic missions our country should have. A preponderant number of these diplomatic missions are in Africa, our primary area of strategic and political interest. It will be difficult to close any of them. The number and size of our diplomatic missions should reflect the government’s foreign policy objectives and strategies. Nigeria’s global responsibilities and obligations have continued to increase. Yet, in our present challenging financial situation, with oil revenue falling steadily, and the  GDP growth rate projected to decline this year to roughly 2.5 per cent, it is obvious that something concrete and urgent must be done to reduce the cost of governance. As far as MFA is concerned it is now inevitable, though regrettable, that the number of our foreign missions could be reduced. But it is going to be a difficult exercise. We have over 125 foreign diplomatic missions in Abuja. Exchange of embassies and ambassadors is reciprocal. Foreign countries from which we withdraw our embassies will not take kindly to it. They will almost certainly retaliate by closing their own diplomatic missions here too. The idea of ‘smart’ embassies proposed by the Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Onyeama, is useful. It involves running the embassies with fewer staff. But this will not lead to much savings. Instead, it will create many more inefficient Nigerian embassies abroad.

  In conclusion, I have to say that we need to consider the fact that the total expenditure of the 125 foreign diplomatic missions in Nigeria is probably higher than the total cost of running our 119 missions abroad. In other words, the total cost of running our missions abroad is far less than what foreign diplomatic missions spend in Nigeria. That should be food for thought.